Sex differences and autism: brain function during verbal fluency and mental rotation
Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) affect more males than females. This suggests that the neurobiology of autism: 1) may overlap with mechanisms underlying typical sex-differentiation or 2) alternately reflect sex-specificity in how autism is expressed in males and females. Here we used functional mag...
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Published in | PloS one Vol. 7; no. 6; p. e38355 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Public Library of Science
12.06.2012
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) affect more males than females. This suggests that the neurobiology of autism: 1) may overlap with mechanisms underlying typical sex-differentiation or 2) alternately reflect sex-specificity in how autism is expressed in males and females. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test these alternate hypotheses. Fifteen men and fourteen women with Asperger syndrome (AS), and sixteen typically developing men and sixteen typically developing women underwent fMRI during performance of mental rotation and verbal fluency tasks. All groups performed the tasks equally well. On the verbal fluency task, despite equivalent task-performance, both males and females with AS showed enhanced activation of left occipitoparietal and inferior prefrontal activity compared to controls. During mental rotation, there was a significant diagnosis-by-sex interaction across occipital, temporal, parietal, middle frontal regions, with greater activation in AS males and typical females compared to AS females and typical males. These findings suggest a complex relationship between autism and sex that is differentially expressed in verbal and visuospatial domains. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Conceived and designed the experiments: FDCCB LM MAG NAH HDC. Performed the experiments: FDCCB LM MAG NAH HDC AW DH. Analyzed the data: ER FDCCB MAG NAH HDC M-CL MVL LM. Wrote the paper: ER HDC NAH LM FDCCB MVL M-CL SB-C. Assessed the participants: AW DH NAH HDC. |
ISSN: | 1932-6203 1932-6203 |
DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0038355 |